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Thursday, August 17, 2006

Haven't blogged for a while- been a little busy. I'm still too busy to organize my thoughts, but I wanted to leave this little tidbit.

As I've said before, I'm a geek, and one of my geekly loves has been comics, especially horror comics and superheroes, with DC heroes being, by far, my favorites.

Anyway, I recently read an excerpt of a book entitled The Physics of Superheroes, in which it examined how certain heroes could or could not exist in our world. One of the heroes, mentioned was the Flash- basically, it examined how many calories he would have to eat to run 60 mph across the country (which is pretty piddly for the Flash). Anyway, the author (a physics professor) calculated how many calories he would burn up, and therefore, how much food he would have to consume to do it. I forget the exact number, it was a heckuva lot. Millions of calories, I think. Said professor concluded that this is one reason the Flash could not exist in our world.

So, I got to thinking- maybe the Flash has a really efficient metabolism. Maybe his stomach is like a nuclear reactor, and can break apart the very molecules of food he eats so that he can harness all the energy of the atom directly. That would surely fuel his cross-country journey?

But, if he was so efficient, does that mean he would never have any waste to eliminate? Does the Flash ever use the bathroom? Also, would that mean that the "Fastest Man Alive" would never get a case of the runs?